From ByronM: 15mm Striking Scorpions and Wizard's Tower

 

For today's post I have a few items, but first up are some more 15mm Warhammer 40k items.  These are some of the left over models from last years Eldar project.  These are 11 3d printed resin Striking Scorpions and a Wave Serpent for transport.

 

While normally only 10 models are in a squad I painted up both versions of the squad exarch (leader) so that I have options in game.  One version has twin swords and shuriken pistols and the other has a huge two handed chain sword.  I also have the Wave Serpent ready to transport them into battle at a moments notice. 

 

 

I tried to go with the original green and yellow paint scheme but I tried several times to get the swords and guns to look good in yellow and I eventually had to give up and go with black and silver for them.  I did leave some markings and the hair in yellow, although it just would not pop bright yellow no matter what I did, so not thrilled with them, but too frustrated to do any more.

Next up is a 3d printed tower that I printed at 10mm scale to use as terrain for my 10mm Kings of War project.  I tried to give it some character by painting the stones in various shades, and think it worked out well.  It should look good on a hill top in a game soon. As for size it is about 4" tall and has a base about 2" square.

ByronM - Horus Heresy in 15mm

 

Day 2 of the event and my second post.  I started these guys yesterday but had to finish the basing and clear coat off this morning before work.  Not that there is a lot to finish on them (let alone do at all) since they are pretty basic paint jobs.

A group of us in Winnipeg are doing Horus Heresy in 15mm, you will likely see Scott C and Steve A post some this Challenge, and a lot of armies were already selected and I have a TON of stuff to paint already this year.  I still wanted to get involved and play a few games though, so I started looking at what armies were out there and came across the Iron Warriors.  

 

 

Their paint scheme is silver, with black guns and black and yellow hazard stripes or chevrons on their shoulders and vehicles.  Sign me up!!!  I primed these silver after finding army painter silver primer, and then brush primed the bases black.  Once the challenge started all I had to do was paint the guns, shoulderpads, add some bronze accents and wash them with Agrax Earthshade (I put that sh*t on everything!), and they were done!  I should be able to get a whole army done in no time with these!

The Rhino was a little more problematic due to the yellow being hard to get coverage in a large area smoothly and evenly.  Trust me I tried, 4 or 5 times!!  In the end I said screw it, sanded it off, broke out the tape and masked around the areas I wanted yellow.  I then re-primed those areas white, then airbrushed yellow.  Perfect and simple, and nice and clean.

 

 

I then proceeded to ruin it with my unsteady hands trying to paint straight lines for the hazard lines.  Oh well its good enough!

For anyone interested these are the 6mm epic STL files from thingiverse and Cults3d and then scaled up about 260% to look correct against other 15mm figures.  While a little chunky looking, I think they look pretty good for Iron Warriors who are supposed to be staunch siege fighters.  

More on this project to come over the course of the challenge, as well as the rest of my 15mm Eldar from last year that got shelved over the summer.

ByronM - More 15mm Eldar

Continuing on with my 15mm (20mm) Warhammer 40k project, I have a few more pieces finished this week.

First up is a unit of Fire Dragons, again these are 6mm models scaled up and printed as roughly 20mm scale (25mm to the top of the crests) from the excellent Lord Chronos on Cults. Even though these were meant to be 6mm scale, so much detail is there that I am pretty sure they would look ok even is scaled up to 28mm (they would be missing some detail, but still very usable).

The unit is made up of 9 Fire Dragons and the Excarch.  Once again I kept the character on a different style base so that they are easy to spot at table distance in 15mm.  They are all painted in the traditional very bright yellow and orange paint scheme.

Next up is the transport to go along with them, again a 6mm model scaled up and printed to be huge.  This is done in the same turquise type colour as the other 2 and features twin link bright lances to keep with the Fire Dragon theme of being able to kill any vehicle or monster type unit dead with heavy firepower.

As per the last submission of these models I am claiming the 10 figures as 4 points each and the tank at 15 points due to pure size and scale of this beast (just as big as most 28mm tanks).  That should put it at 55 points, but Millsy, please feel free to adjust or change at your discretion though as I really could care less about the overall points...

ByronM - Pointy Ear Pansy Space Elves - Warhammer 40k in 15mm

Normally I like getting an entry in the first day of the annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, but this year I have been laid up sick for almost 2 weeks and haven't been able to focus enough to paint at all, so here is is over a week after the start of the event, my first entry.

Recently a group of friends here have started playing Warhammer 40k (old 5th edition since the newer versions SUCK BALLS) in 15mm true scale, and of course I had to join in!  Being true scale means that everything is sized to the lore, rather than to what GW had sized things.  This means Imperial Guard stand about 18mm tall (or real 15mm scale), while things like Eldar and Space Marines stand 22-24mm tall (20mm scale) since in the lore Eldar are 7' tall but have huge poncy helmets and Space Marines are 8" tall.  This scaling makes everything look so much better on the table as it makes more sense and looks better.  Also being 15mm fixes (or minimizes) so many of the issues in 40k being 28mm scale, like having lots of HUGE tanks on a table, ranges being ridiculously short and more.  It's still 40k at its core, so it's still not perfect, but it is better!

That said, the armies we play with are therefore mostly 20mm scale even though we call it 40k in 15mm.  The Falcon and Wave Serpent here are almost 5" x 4" so pretty damn big for what we would call 15mm scale.

Most of the models here though are actually 6mm STL files from Lord Chronos on Cults and are meant for use in Epic Armageddon.  As you can tell from these prints though, the guy is a genius sculptor and there is more than enough detail on the models to stand up when scaled up 260% to be about 20mm scale! 

The few models I could not find for my force were the Warlocks and Farseer models!  This would be a problem for most people but I have a friend that is a great sculptor and an even more helpful person which I asked for some help. He had me buy some files that had eldar helmets and weapons in 28mm per-sculpted and then bodged them up and modelled them onto some bodies and cloaks for me in like 2 days!!!  Thanks a ton, amazing work!!!  Before you ask though, no the warlock files are not for sale they were for personal use, and his name is not listed here as he wants nothing to do with GW and their insane legal team! 

These are the first batch in what will hopefully be a 2000 point Eldar army within the next few weeks.  I have been jonesing to paint these for over a month, but wanted to leave them for the painting challenge to start... so here they now are!  Much more to come...

I am sticking with traditional aspect colour schemes for these, but since the Eldar are space elves and therefore a bit light in the loafers, I needed a kinda pansy colour for the transports, so I came up with a kinda pale blue green that I think is almost the colour of corroded copper.  I think it works well, but had no idea how to actually highlight anything on it, luckily it looks OK as is I think.  I just need some magnets to come in so I can attach them to the flight stands and have them off the ground as they should be.

This entry should also count towards my "Squirrel Challenge" and as the first planet on the challenge map Vulcan where I have to paint something either logical or with pointy ears.  Eldar seemed to fit the bill, so I used them. 

The vehicles should each count for 15 points (30 total) and then the 10 Dire Avengers and 7 Farseer/Warlocks each count for 4 points (68 total) and 20 points for completing the Vulcan planet challenge for a grand total of 118 points!  Not a bad start!

ByronM - By Fire and Sword 15mm - Bridge and Cavalry Unit

Last weekend I went to play a pile of games with my good friend Curt out in Regina, and was planning to take out "By Fire and Sword" to show him.  The only issue was, while packing up the night before, I realized I didn't have a terrain piece for the scenario I wanted to run! DAMN!!!

So, I quickly searched through all my STL files for a bridge, and bingo the Hagglethorne Hollow kickstarter I backed a few months ago had the perfect thing.  So, I scaled it down to work with 15mm and the scenario requirements and printed it.  Once done, I quickly primed and painted it, and it was still drying as it got packed up for the road trip!

Also for the game, I had painted up another unit of cavalry during the week leading up to the trip for the Holy Roman Empire, so I am showing them crossing the bridge.

15mm 30 years war Holy Roman Empire (Byron)

One of the goals I set for myself for this years challenge was to try and reduce the pile-o-shame (models that have not yet been painted) that has accumulated over the years at my place.  So I created a large list of projects that have started over the years, but never finished.  Once such project was last years foray into the 30 years war in 15mm.  While I finished quite a few bases of figures during last years challenge, I barely touched the stock pile of them that I bought, and have yet to play a game with them due to not having enough completed.  Therefore I thought it would be a good thing to get cracking on them over the Christmas holiday.

Here is the batch that I got done over the last week: 18 cavalry, 18 musketeers, and 14 pikemen.

All of these were painted using a very quick and messy method.  Essentially, all I did was apply base coats of the basic colours, then washed everything with the one GW paint I use (Agrax Earthshade), and then highlighted them with the base colours again, and in some cases 1 shade higher to get some highlights.

While this basic method produces tabletop ready miniatures quickly, they are nothing special.  Which means I get frustrated painting them quickly as well, as it feels like cheating to not put your best effort into something you are painting, BUT with something like 500+ more models to do to complete them all, I simply can not put much more effort into each model than this or I will never finish them!

Overall though, at tabletop level they look ok, and that's all that counts for these.  My plan is to use the "By Fire and Sword" rule set with them for small skirmish games (a great rule set that's super detailed and in depth) and then to use "By Pike & Shot" for bigger games (another great rule set, essentially GW's old Warmaster rules).  I look forward to getting them on Curt's table for a game with the Regina crew sometime this year.